Agile + DevOps East 2018 - Career/ Personal Development

Tuesday, November 6

How is your "Agile transformation" going? A McKinsey survey from 2013 found that 70% of transformation programs failed to achieve their intended goal for a variety of reasons ranging from culture to process to finance. More recently the news for digital focused transformations was even worse with 84% failing according to Michael Gail and the Pulsepoint Group. Agile coach...

Currently much of agile adoption—coaching, advice, techniques, training, and even the empathy—revolves around the agile teams. Leaders are typically ignored, marginalized at best, and in the worst cases even vilified. But Bob Galen and Mary Thorn contend that there is a central and important role for managers and leaders within agile environments. Join Bob and Mary as they explore the patterns of mature agile managers and leaders. Examine why those who understand servant leadership know how to effectively support, grow, coach, and empower their agile teams in ways that increase the team's...

Are important words often left unsaid at your place of work? Do you feel like you're navigating a complex maze in conversations? Does your message tend to miss the mark with co-workers, who increasingly seem to be impediments to your reaching your goals? Trust and communication issues within the workplace can hollow out an organization. When organizations suffering from a lack of trust, it costs them speed, productivity, and collaboration. Join Allison Pollard and Marcus King as they share models to evaluate your own behaviors and facilitate activities to help you find your voice for...

An organizational change could cause confusion, bring havoc and face strong resistance. Learn how you can help your teams and management, experience the value of a DevOps culture by participating in this workshop! The workshop simulates the pre-DevOps life of a large enterprise whose teams (development, operations and business) have very different goals. Workshop participants will use role cards, Legos, and chocolate to experience the goals misalignment, simulate a product development flow, and make bottlenecks visible. Through debriefing and group discussions participants will...

Have you ever needed a way to measure your testing leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that. This toolkit includes a personal assessment of your leadership competencies and the evolution of testing and testing leadership. Join Jennifer as she explores a set of eight dimensions of successful leaders, provides suggestions on how you can...

Journey from “Are we doing things right” to “Are we doing the right thing?” This workshop is designed for those who are passionate about creating products that people love but are struggling to keep up with the needs of their clients while continuously trying to bring products and ideas to market. This new, global, cognitive era requires innovative thinking and proactive design of human-centric products and services that customize a customers’ experience – and provide scalable returns in an uncertain market. Join Julee Everett in this hands-on, interactive workshop to learn to apply...

Thursday, November 8

As agile methods find more global applicability, we are finding groups outside of IT that have nothing to do with technology or software development demonstrating success with agile methods. But the approach to the solutions they deliver are often catered to their own unique circumstances. The original Agile Manifesto, principles, and supporting frameworks were formed with software development in mind, but from a holistic perspective, a different approach is needed for enterprise solutions outside of IT. Robert Woods will show you how to translate the success seen in agile software...

Two engineering teams with vastly different work styles—one waterfall and one Scrum—merged into one matrixed organization to work on a critical strategic effort. During this transition the teams experienced many problems, including growing from a small team into a large one overnight, with half of the organization now knowing nothing about agile. They had issues with how to handle communication, the right level of process consistency across the twenty-plus distributed agile teams, working through technical dependencies, a lack of subject matter expertise, and no single point of control of...

Open work areas, a focus on collaboration and conversations, and group events that seem to require verbal fluency ... It may feel like the agile ecosystem is designed with extroverts in mind. But science tells us that introverts make up almost half of the workforce, and they may struggle to be productive in an agile environments. In fact, introverts might even shy away from agile opportunities because of the radical collaboration it requires. In this interactive session, Julee Everett will teach you to recognize the traits of an extrovert and an introvert through self-identification....

Many surveys indicate that more teams work in distributed environments. But agile approaches work best when people collocate, huddle around a problem, and closely collaborate on the best solutions that will deliver value. Is collocation the only option these days? Does distributed always imply “dysfunctional”? Does technology help or hinder? Maybe the problem is how we think about the working environment. Mark Kilby will share key principles of successful distributed agile teams that help define better working environments. Understand how the principles apply to different types of...

Are parts of your organization embracing agile while others become more resistant, disconnected, or frustrated by the idea? Or maybe your team wants to be more agile but it isn’t sure how to get started because it’s not a typical development team. Agile has been moving out of software and being embraced by nondevelopment teams for years, but it’s not always a great experience. How can we make the best parts of agility relevant to any team? This hands-on session will show you how to start teams down the path to “being agile” by taking a teamwork-centered approach. With examples from a...

Pair programming is the practice you love to hate! It's been nearly twenty years since Extreme Programming promoted pair programming as a collaborative practice, and it's still here. And if you thought that was bad, now there's mobbing, where the entire team works together on one thing at a time. Does that seem nuts? Yet we often hear teams say, "We go faster because we are mobbing." In this anecdote-heavy session, you'll hear Jeff Langr's history of working through various models for collaboration (or not) across the past several decades, including pairing, solo programming, and mobbing....

The Second City, an improvisational comedy club that launched the careers of comedians such as Chris Farley, Tina Fey, and Steve Carell, has delivered a successful product to audiences nightly for almost sixty years. How do they do it? By recognizing the power of feedback. Brian Eno, a pioneer in the music industry who produced albums for U2 and Coldplay, relies on a feedback generation system to ensure the best performances of the bands he works with. Likewise, the lean startup movement has uncovered a similar pattern of organizations that thrive on experimentation and learning. John...

You've read dozens of books on agile and hundreds of articles, but no one actually told you how to build the team of your dreams. Josh Anderson brings the real-world experience of growing a team from zero engineers to thirty while shipping five products—and he did it is less than a year. Learn how to build a team from scratch or transform your existing team into a mystical self-directed team, and understand how leadership operates in a world of self-directed teams. You'll be able to take these lessons home and hire, grow, and support self-directed teams, then start changing the world.

It can be lonely at the top. Trying to find other leaders who are having the same problem and issues you have and are willing to take a few minutes and help solve problems is really hard. One solution that Bob Galen has found works well is the "fishbowl" conversation. The fishbowl activity is also great for keeping a focused conversation while in a large group of people. At any time, only a few people have a conversation—the fish in the fishbowl. The remaining people are listeners—the ones watching the fishbowl. The caveat is that the listeners can join the discussion at any moment. In...

When it comes to our day-to-day work interactions, there are many factors that pass us by simply because we’re not used to paying attention to them. The best way to become more observant is through deliberate practice, so join Julie Wyman for a brief introduction to themes and different aspects of interactions to start observing, followed by small group exercises to practice observing and to help understand what it feels like to be observed. The exercises will be followed by a debrief and full group discussion about how to observe thoughtfully and share feedback in a neutral, nonjudgmental...

Agile adoption has changed the corporate landscape in many different ways. And while the change has been mostly positive for the teams, some can see agile and Scrum ideas as a revolt against traditional management practices. If the team is self-organized, then what's the manager's role? Have no fear—managers are not obsolete; their job just looks a little different. Katy Sherman will discuss how agile has reshaped the manager's role. You will see examples of what not to do, such as when managers become a real obstacle during agile adoption, as well as learn how individuals, teams, and...

Every one of us has the potential to be limitless in our careers, personal life, and everything in between! Yet most of us—yes, including you—are only achieving a fraction of what you are capable of. We all want more, but we aren’t sure how to go get it. This session will be an interactive and practical guide to breaking through all the things that limit you and will kickstart your journey to a limitless life. Jessica Soroky will introduce activities from the personal development program Limitless by Choice and address the potential all teams have to be high-performing when they start...